Jerk Gustafsson tells Gamereactor that his favourite movie is Raiders of the Lost Ark: "we're looking quite a lot at it for the game".
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With Wolfenstein: The New Order recently turning eight, and with MachineGames having grown and modernised some of its working methods, the studio’s executive producer Jerk Gustafsson was glad to sit down and talk about all things MachineGames with Gamereactor, for about 20 minutes, in the video below. And while the studio’s upcoming Indiana Jones game is more secret than the location of the Holy Grail, we talked a little bit about the franchise and the developer’s approach to it.
“For me that would be Raiders of the Lost Ark, of course”, Gustafsson says about the essence of Indy and his favourite movie so far. “This is where the main characters are established, and then they created the pillars that the rest of the movies basically stand on. I also think it is the best movie, it’s a classic adventure movie. We are looking quite a lot at Raiders of the Lost Ark when we develop the game”.
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However, there was the original trilogy from the 80’s, the additional fourth movie in 2008, and now an upcoming fifth entry in 2023. We ask Gustafsson about the franchise’s perception within today’s pop culture and how the different films may change it with time.
“God, that’s a difficult question”, the MachineGames co-founder reflects. “I’m sure it will to some extent, and I’m sure [Kingdom of the] Crystal Skull did it as well to some extent, but I don’t really think so much about that myself. Obviously we look at all the things, we look at the movies, but not only the movies, we look quite a lot at the old games, comic books… We just need to make sure that whatever we do fits with the lore and that we tell a story that works with the lore and that’s not in any way in contradiction with the lore. But, when it comes to my personal favourite, yeah it’s Raiders. I also really love The Last Crusade, I think it’s so nice with Sean Connery in that movie. But there’s a lot of good stuff in pretty much all of the movies, you just have to find the pieces that you want to use”.
Check out Gamereactor’s frontpage in the next few days for a full transcript of the interview to learn more about MachineGames’ history and work culture, a look back at how the Wolfenstein games were created, or how the Swedish studio approaches different genres and IPs.